


And it's not a cry that you hear at night

by Cheesecloth



Series: Asexual Awareness Week [4]
Category: Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, The Little Mermaid - All Media Types
Genre: Ain't no romance here, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-12-31 17:21:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21149393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cheesecloth/pseuds/Cheesecloth
Summary: The (Disney) fairytale of Ariel, finding her way to having legs and walking among the lands without falling in love.





	And it's not a cry that you hear at night

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [roguefaerie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/roguefaerie/pseuds/roguefaerie) in the [GenAndAroPrompts](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/GenAndAroPrompts) collection. 

It was when she saw the ship that she knew. The music was unlike any she’d heard below the waves.

Ariel swam as close as Icarus would ever dare to reach the sun.

The melody of curious instruments swelled, and she felt the lure like her father’s favorite angler fish, luring silly fish to their doom.

When she clambered up high enough to get a good look, she nearly gasped aloud, which would have hurt, as she was not fully acclimated to the oxygen yet.

The deck of the ship was alight with merry men, dancing in the pale yellow shade of the lamp.

On and on they sang to the melody, and Ariel’s yearning became too overwhelming, too undeniable.

Her father warned her that her fascination with human culture would lead her astray, and she would wash up on the shore, ready to be speared by the startled fisherman.

But how could she forsake her dream, when it was in front of her so tantalizingly close? So incredibly…human?

With a quiet, indignant huff, she fell back into the sea, decision made.

The next days Ariel found herself dangerously wading through the shallow depths by the harbor.

The fog kept her hidden, as she lifted herself onto the pier. No humans came out so early in the morning. Even the fishermen slept now. It was the perfect opportunity.

Once she spot the silhouette of a wayward human in any amount of distance, Ariel would call upon the gift of her gracious mother; the last gift she gave to anyone before fading away so tragically, further than any depth that Ariel could swim.

She sang.

Like starstruck guppies, each human would fall into a trance and stumble towards her. Her voice would swell and dip like a wave, making them sit on a nearby stool. And in their trance, they would tell her their stories.

She drank in the petty gossip just as desperately as she consumed their adoration for their children.

Despite the idle similarities between her world and theirs, she couldn’t help but feel more at home in the human stories.

She craved to learn more, and so she did. Before she let go of the entrancing grasp on her precious humans -and oh how precious they and their stories were to her- she would implore about their politics and routine way of life.

She loved to dip back under the waves after a particularly engrossing story and fantasize it was her, with human legs and fantastical way of dress, and that it would be her who quarrels with her equally human neighbor about the different kinds of species of radishes. Or she would fantasize that she would pick mushrooms in a forest, which she had asked for extensive clarification on. She could just imagine the green of it everywhere. The dead coral- no, sticks, that would break under her clumsy stroll, and she would laugh in that dream. She would lay on the grass and feel the breeze as she stared at the clouds, rather than stare from the waves, bouncing in cycles with the motions.

The humans, though they don’t remember her clearly, have begun to feel weary around the harbor. Stories of a siren’s song made them fear the waves. It upset Ariel very much that her source of human immersion was dwindling into nothing.

She was hungry for stories.

And she was absolutely starving for her own to begin.

When the number of humans walking in the early morning fog became nothing, Ariel made another decision.

She swam back to the depths of her home. And then she swam further.

There was an old tale, among her elder sisters, who whispered about a sea witch when father or Sebastian were not near.

And it was to that sea witch that Ariel hurried to.

She had come upon the witch’s lair and asked for legs. The witch spieled on about love, with her grin as wide as any starved predator.

So when Ariel dismissed love, the witch was astonished. In her uncertainty, Ariel called upon a new gift- the stories of the humans. She used their clever ways of trickery, and of lying to get what you most desperately want.

In her soul, with each song, she carried with her the experience of dozens of humans. And it was with this that she tricked the old witch into giving her legs. 

She washed up on the shores on shaky legs. All she had were seaweed rags, her voice, and a determination no mermaid had ever dreamed of using in such a way.

She walked.


End file.
